


castles crumble, kingdoms fall

by runthemredlightsbabe



Series: pieces [9]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Hope, M/M, stupid author thinks using conversational narrative is cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:05:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runthemredlightsbabe/pseuds/runthemredlightsbabe
Summary: We want to believe that love is enough to keep the world together, but it isn’t. It can’t be. You can’t look at someone and say “I love you” and expect that everything bad and awful in their thoughts and lives will disappear. Love isn’t enough to keep our lives together, because it’s the people who don’t know they are loved who are the ones that need it the most. What do we do for a boy who doesn’t think he deserves love? What do we do for the kids who don’t think they’re worth it? Who don’t think they’re enough?Akaashi Keiji left because he didn’t know how to stay. He didn’t know how to pick up his pieces. He didn’t think he was worth the trouble and the time.





	castles crumble, kingdoms fall

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. I don't really have much more to say, only that you people are the most underrated group of individuals. Seriously, your compassion and creativity and optimism and empathy are simply astounding. 
> 
> My lovely friend, [crowswillfly](http://crowswillfly.tumblr.com/) made an awesome playlist for this series! You can find it on [8tracks!](https://8tracks.com/skihale/pieces) please give it some love, the series would be completely different without it.

!!! IMPORTANT NOTE !!!! This section contains explicit discussion of planning and attempting suicide, as well as self-loathing. Please, please keep yourselves safe. <3 <3 <3  
___

This story is told in pieces. It has to be. There is physically no other way to tell it, because this is the tragedy of Akaashi Keiji, but it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, shouldn’t be left all to him. To carry for the rest of eternity, just another faceless Atlas.

You have to understand; when he jumped off the bridge, Akaashi made a choice. And maybe his choice was selfish. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was stupid and painful to think about, and maybe we shouldn’t think about it. But he didn’t have anything left. He had no one, nothing. He was lost. 

There’s a version of this story where Bokuto saves the day. He’s enough to move the sun and the stars, and he’d tear it all down for the boy with the green eyes. Bokuto loves one way, he loves forward, straight and true and honest as an arrow. He loves Akaashi. He will always, always love Akaashi.

But that’s not the way this works.

That’s not how suicide works.

Because that’s the thing. We want to believe that love is enough to keep the world together, but it isn’t. It can’t be. You can’t look at someone and say “I love you” and expect that everything bad and awful in their thoughts and lives will disappear. Love isn’t enough to keep our lives together, because it’s the people who don’t know they are loved who are the ones that need it the most. What do we do for a boy who doesn’t think he deserves love? What do we do for the kids who don’t think they’re worth it? Who don’t think they’re enough?

Akaashi Keiji left because he didn’t know how to stay. He didn’t know how to pick up his pieces. He didn’t think he was worth the trouble and the time.

Akaashi left because he didn’t know what else to do. He was lost, and he was scared, and he was terribly lonely. He created this vacuum in himself, a vacuum that swallowed him from the inside-out, because Akaashi Keiji loved forward and backward and sideways and up and down and north and south, and it destroyed him. Because you can’t give everything away. You can’t give all of yourself, because one day, there will be nothing left for you to have.

You can’t seal a black-hole with a kiss. Right? In the end, you’re just feeding it. Making it bigger.

Does this make sense?

Bokuto Koutarou could not have saved Akaashi Keiji because he loved him.

And Akaashi Keiji dies for everyone he loves.

That’s how it works.

That was his pattern.

But this story is told in pieces.

Because I lied to you.

And this isn’t how it ends.

____

Kenma doesn’t know Oikawa very well. They knows that sometimes, inexplicably, the guy will show up halfway through a graveyard shift in inappropriate-themed streetwear just to explain, in disturbingly graphic detail, that the aliens are coming to get them.

And then Akaashi will come out of nowhere, sometimes accompanied by the big, angry one with the massive biceps, and they will drag Oikawa by his ankles out of Tinto de Cuervos.

These experiences have taught the gamer part of Kenma that Oikawa is a minor god, come to cause mischief and probably also mayhem.

Usually, they avoid him. They're not one for mischief. Or mayhem.

But Akaashi Keiji is a good friend, a good person, a good man, and when Kenma looks at him, they see a little bit of the universe. Maybe a bit blurry, maybe sort of tarnished, washed in verdigris and rust and bad blood, but underneath all the dark dark dark of Keiji, he is awash in stardust. 

So Kenma goes looking for Oikawa. 

The first thing they really register is the music. (English, and incredibly whiny). Next, they observe, with mild disbelief, that the florist’s office has been transformed into an enormous nest of pillows.

It takes them about a minute and a half to locate Oikawa among the bedding.

 _“He’s in a bit of a mood,” Kuroo had said, winking_.

A bit of a mood.

Kuroo’s a dead man.

“Oikawa-san?” Kenma asks.

There is a dramatic groan, and a graceful hand appears from among the numerous cat plushies, gesturing impatiently. “Who are you?”

“Kenma Kozume. I work with-”

“My brother,” Oikawa sits up. The circles under his eyes are so dark, they look like ink stains.

 _The minor god,_ the gamer part of Kenma notes with some interest, _appears to be dying._

“I wanted to talk to you about Keiji,” Kenma says, with very little confidence. “I visited him a few weeks ago, and I found some... things.”

Oikawa raises an eyebrow. “You snoop?”

“It was accidental." Kenma is a very bad liar. 

He prickles with anxiety as Akaashi's strange, pale brother narrows his eyes. They wonder if maybe this is a terrible idea, if they should leave this sort of business to people like Nishinoya and Yamaguchi, who were more-or-less socially apt and could keep ahead of their inhibitions long enough to save a friend. 

F _uck it._ They shove the pocketful of folded letters at Oikawa, fast and unsteady. “Here. From Bokuto-san.”

Oikawa takes them bemusedly, wrinkling his nose. "What are these? Love letters?" 

Kenma had been mulling over that question for weeks. They pick their next words gingerly, gentle. “More like... hope. Letters of... hope."

___

Tooru isn’t, as much as some (*cough* Kuroo *cough* Iwaizumi) would have everyone believe, an idiot.

He knows Nishinoya and Tadashi have lots of angry, angry thoughts about him, lots of angry, angry thoughts about maybe the worst-best mistake he’s ever made.

He knows they won’t talk to him. Maybe never again. 

But he still sees the letters and knows that something is happening.

Something that he maybe doesn’t understand, but maybe they will.

_The letters. Folded, heaped, well-worn. Read over and over and over and over again. Memorized._

Yuu won’t pick up his calls, but he has another way to get the message across.

“Make sure he reads all of them,” Oikawa says. He takes a breath, but his voice cracks anyway. “Tell him that I think Aka-chan is lonely.”

Hinata’s sun-eyes go dark.

___

Shoyou makes sure that Yuu is sitting down. It breaks his heart a little, because for the first time in a while, Nishinoya is in a good mood. He cracks an obscene joke about Hinata getting handsy, sitting on the couch where they kissed for the first time, in his favorite pair of Naruto-themed boxers.

Shoyou knows Yuu and he knows that the letters would probably kill him. So he makes sure Yuu is sitting down on their stupid, ugly brown couch, and says, “Yuu, Akaashi-san is going to hurt himself.”

Yuu goes scary still.

Shoyou has never been afraid of crying for other people, but as his eyes swell with tears, as he pats his boyfriend’s lovely, kind face, and says, “Akaashi’s going to hurt himself, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” he wonders tiredly when Akaashi will stop ruining all the people Shoyou loves. 

___

“He’s in love with Bokuto,” Tadashi repeats, incredulously.

“Yes,” Nishinoya says, crossing his legs. “And Bo loves him back.”

There’s silence. Noya has always liked this little balcony of Tadashi’s. On nights like this, where the heat pools under his skin, in all the corners of the stuffy house, the old metal railing lets him catch his breath again.

Except right now, he sort of feels like he’s already been suffocated.

“Maybe they’ll run away together,” Yamaguchi says after a while. His hair is too long, too overgrown. It sticks to his neck and to his temples, dark and hazely brown.

Yuu turns his gaze out, into the late evening skyline. “I don’t think so, Pecas.”

“Yeah,” A heavy, terribly sad, sigh. “Me, neither.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. He won’t pick up his phone.” Yamaguchi shakes his head. “I don’t know how to even start. Do we call someone? Are we supposed to call someone?”

Yuu laughs. “Who? A psychologist? One of those hotlines? And say what? _‘Hi, we think our friend is suicidal, but we don’t know for sure, and anyway, he’s angry at us, so he won’t pick up any of our calls, and he might be totally fine, just taking some time for himself and his kid who just got out of the hospital’_? Yeah, they’ll love that.”

“But he needs professional help. We can’t just leave him to suffer alone, Noya, he’ll-” Yamaguchi shuts his eyes. Looks sick, and swallows. “He’ll do something _stupid_.”

“I know,” Nishinoya says, and wants to go to bed and never wake up. “But who’s he going to listen to? Us? Oikawa? Yeah, right. I don’t even know where Tooru is. I haven’t seen him in weeks. Kageyama isn’t responding, either. It’s like he and Keiji have vanished off the face of the earth.”

Tadashi stills.

Yuu looks at him. “What?”

His oldest friend shakes his head, holds up a hand, the way he does when he’s had one of his masterpiece ideas and needs some time to put all the pieces together.

Noya turns back to the skyline just in time to see an enormous black bird fly straight into a windowpane. Even a kilometer across traffic, Nishinoya can still hear the awful ‘snap’.

The bird falls just as Tadashi leaps to his feet.

____

Tadashi Yamaguchi is a good person.

He’s an earnest person.

At least, he tries to be.

He... He- He tries.

And this is maybe, maybe, maybe, probably definitely not the circumstance he pictured when he imagined himself in Tsukishima’s doorway for the first time, but that’s how life goes, and if Tsukishima Kei isn’t pleased to find Yamaguchi Tadashi drowning himself in tears right outside his door, he doesn’t show it.

Instead, he lets Tadashi in, and makes tea.

Through lots of flubbed jokes and tears, Yamaguchi manages to explain that Akaashi is going to show up at Tsukishima’s door in a few days looking for Bokuto.

“Don’t let him get away, Kei,” Tadashi says, grabbing Tsukishima’s hand. “If you let him get away, he won’t come back.”

Kei looks a little surprised, he glances down and stares bemusedly at their clasped hands, and Yamaguchi knows his palm is sweaty and gross, and his face is all inflamed with tears and guilt and grief.

Tsukishima’s fingers tighten around Tadashi’s.

____

Tsukishima Kei tells Kageyama that Akaashi is suicidal.

Kageyama isn’t particularly keen on hearing this.

In fact, he tries to strangle Kei.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Now, even on a good day, Tsukishima doesn’t like Kageyama very much. Half-strangled by the weird guy’s clammy, awful hands, Tsukishima finds the strength in himself to merely come to terms with the knowledge that after this, they will probably never have to interact again. But Tsukishima isn’t here for Kageyama. He’s not even here for himself, which is crazy, because Kei can’t recall the last time he did something exclusively for another person. It’s actually annoying, because out of all of them, he’s probably the most selfish. The most apathetic. The least interested in being any kind of hero. And yet here he is. Being murdered by the blue-eyed spawn of Satan, because for fuck’s sake, someone needs to take charge and make sure Akaashi Keiji doesn't actually kill himself. 

He respects Akaashi. Likes him, even. They understand each other, on some weird, psychedelic level that Tsukishima is not comfortable discussing sober. He realizes that if Akaashi dies, lots of people will be very, very sad, probably including himself. He also realizes that he is the only person who knows what Akaashi is going through. He knows what it’s like to be three feet from the edge, and how good it feels to jump.

“You think I want to be here?” Tsukishima says, incredulously. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I hate your fucking guts.”

“Tsukishima,” Hinata says quietly, which is stupid enough in itself, because when has Hinata ever once been the rational one? What’s even more stupid is that Tsukishima listens to him.

“Look,” He says, grabbing Kageyama by the collar and shaking him. “Hey! Look! Look at me. _Look at me_ , for fucks’ sake.”

Kageyama stares at him, and his blue eyes are as flat as the ends of the world.

“Whether you want to hear it or not, Akaashi Keiji is one bad decision from killing himself. Your only family, Kageyama, will be dead by tomorrow, at his own hands.”

“How would you know?” Kageyama is surprisingly strong for someone so wrecked. He very nearly rips Tsukishima’s sweater in his grief. “How would you _fucking know_? You’re no one! No one to him. Why would he tell you? Why would he fucking tell you and l _eave me_? Why- _why the fuck would you know_?”

The last part is screamed in Kei’s face, and Tsukishima has to physically restrain himself from taking a fucking swing.

 _I’m going to disappear._ He hears, sees Akaashi, all bloody and empty and broken in his hands, remembers all the rage draining out of him, replaced by cold, washed-out fear. _I’m going to disappear._

“Because,” Tsukishima says, blankly. _I’m going to disappear_. “I tried to take my life. I know what- what it's like.”

Kageyama looks a bit like he’s been shot. Even Hinata seems staggered.

“Surprised?” Tsukishima sneers. “Life’s not been especially kind to me, either, _King_.”

“Tsukishima,” Hinata says again, but his voice wobbles, and Tsukishima knows he's crying for other people, again. 

“It’s alright, Sunflower,” Kei says, gruff and tired. "I'm just bringing some words of wisdom for our King."

“What do you want from me?” Kageyama says, and he looks… Subdued. Vulnerable. 

Kei straightens. “You need to be there for Akaashi.”

“I tried,” Kageyama whimpers, soft and sad and lost. “I tried so hard to be there for him. But he left.”

“He’s tying up loose ends,” Tsukishima says, obliquely. “That’s what happens. It’s why some people leave notes. He’s a bomb, and he knows it. He’s trying to minimize the fallout.” He’s careful to keep his voice steady, clinical, blank. This is harder than he thought it would be.

Kageyama goes pretty pale, and reaches out for Hinata. Shoyou grabs his hand like an anchor.

“I didn’t know,” Tobio says, in that same awful small voice.

Tsukishima sneers again. “Of course you didn’t.”

“Kei,” Hinata says, for a third time. He means it, soft brown eyes pleading.

“Akaashi has been thinking about this for a long time,” Kei says. “Months. Maybe years. This stuff doesn’t just happen overnight. You plan your own death. You stage it. Figure out when and where. You make arrangements. For- things.”

This is _very_ hard to talk about.

 _Breathe_ , He hears Kuroo, like a shitty recording. _Take it easy, Stars. You just gotta breathe._

“He’s going to find Bokuto,” Tsukishima continues. “To have one last good night. One last good memory. He’ll probably stay for a few hours, but he’ll be gone before the sun rises. You don’t have very much time.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Kageyama stammers. “What- what do I even say to him? I mean- I- I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! What if- where is he? I- you have to- there’s got-” he cuts off, chokes a little. “I want to help him.”

“You’re probably his only chance,” Tsukishima agrees. “That’s why I’m here. Look, Akaashi doesn’t think there’s anything left. He thinks that his life is not worth living anymore. He thinks that he’s lost everyone he loves and that everything he touches will end up ruined. He hates himself, he hates everything about himself, and he’s in pain every minute of every day. He needs support and he needs you.” To their lasting credit, neither Hinata nor Kageyama acknowledge the pathetic cracks in Kei's voice. 

“He left.”

“He left because he loves you,” Tsukishima says, flat again. “He probably loves you more than you even really can comprehend. And that isn’t going to be enough for forever, but it will keep him alive long enough to remember how to survive.”

____

Kageyama is almost too late.

He was taught, when he was young, that everyone dies a lonely, awful, death. He lived for thirteen years like that, waiting in the limbo between this world and the next, with nothing, not even a first name.

When he looks back, feels Hinata’s tiny little hand in his, he remembers how much he wanted someone to fight for him. Someone to fight as hard as he fought for Hinata. Someone greater than him. Better than him, who was kind and brave and strong.

He remembers staring back with terror and defiance at the beautiful boy with the green eyes, and recognizing himself in the set of the stranger's shoulder-blades. In the haunting ghost of eyes that have seen too much.

He remembers looking at Akaashi, and forgetting to be scared.

It became something like a dogma, following Akaashi everywhere he went, guarding his shadow, watching every breath, every flicker of life.

Curious.

Safe.

He remembers starving to death, falling in a heap at Akaashi Keiji’s knees because his feet had led him there. Remembers thinking that maybe, as he slipped out of consciousness, that this would be a good place to die, that maybe it wasn’t like they said. Maybe his death wouldn’t be so lonely, after all.

And then he survived.

He didn't really think about death much anymore. There wasn't any reason to, because every time he jumped too far or too fast, Akaashi was there to pull him back. Whenever he reached out, Akaashi was there. Steady, lovely, incredible Akaashi, who fought for him with tooth and nail. Akaashi loved him with lots of bright, brilliant, warm, gentle, strong love, and Kageyama loved him right back, just as hard, and just as strong.

He knows he will never be able to repay his debt. He will never be able to gather even a sum total of one third of what he owes.

He made himself a promise, though. That if he couldn’t repay Akaashi, then he would stay with him. Stay until the very end, and make sure that Akaashi never ever died a lonely, awful death. That Akaashi would never be unloved, even if Kageyama’s heart wasn’t beating, and his lungs were filled with stones. Tobio would be there.

He’s almost too late.

But here’s the thing, because maybe love isn’t enough to keep the world together, but love fuels hope, and there isn’t enough tragedy and suffering in all of the known universe and beyond that could strangle hope. It is what keeps us fighting. It is what ties all of us together, it is the core of survival, the heat and the energy, the blood that fills our veins and washes away our stones and our battlescars.

Kageyama lived on hope. All the fire in his veins, all the fighting and the biting and the surviving. All the love and hardship and red strings, they fed on hope. A tiny kernel, gifted intuitively, instinctively. Selflessly, accidentally, by Akaashi, left to root and grow and spread in Kageyama’s chest. Turned to fire and heat and energy and love, so much love, enough love to topple castles and turn the world on its head.

Enough love to give him wings.

**Author's Note:**

> i did say that it would have a happy ending. i did say that.
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](http://iamtherabbitwhisperer.tumblr.com/)


End file.
